John Denver classic provokes Thai karaoke gun massacre

'Take me home, country...'

Common Topics

A Thai rubber tapper who got rather tired of his neighbours' karaoke version of John Denver's Country Roads resolved the noise pollution problem by shooting eight of them dead, the Telegraph reports.

Weenus Chumkamnerd, 52, blew away a respected female doctor and seven of her guests at a rowdy singalong in the town of Hat Yai, close to the Malaysian border. He later recounted: "I warned these people about their noisy karaoke parties. I said if they carried on I would go down and shoot them. I had told them if I couldn’t talk sense into them I would come back and finish them off."

A neighbour confirmed that while the karaoke group "normally sang Thai pop and southern Thai ballads", they had a particular penchant for Country Roads.

As well as Dr Suthathip Thammachart, 36, the massacre also accounted for the life of Chumkamnerd's own brother-in-law, Boontip Desaro. Chumkamnerd rather touchingly got his son to whisk Desaro to hospital following the carnage, but he was already dead.